Dear Clients & Friends,
The end of another year is almost upon us. Below is a link to our December 2012 Market Update. As you will see, it provides our latest sense of M&A values, activity and trends for the dozen plus technology, information and healthcare sectors that we follow.
Click here for our Market Update
We hope your year has been happy, healthy and prosperous.
This month we saw sizable activity announced, including Knight Capital’s takeover offer from Getco that is valued as high as $1.8Bn. However, the vast majority of transactions were well under $200M, for example FICO’s acquisition of CR Software and Brady’s agreement to acquire Systems Alternative International. One theme we’ve observed is the increasing demand for middle- and back- office IT, as evidenced by the acquisitions of logistics software provider JDA Software and document capture solution provider Encore Imaging Systems.
Healthcare M&A activity continues to be strong as well, with certain transactions demonstrating notable patterns in the industry. For example, Humana has now joined Aetna (Medicity) and United (Axolotl) in purchasing an HIE vendor (Certify Data Systems). Dell divested of its healthcare RCM business to Conifer Health. And lastly, McKesson has had the most active few months in some years in purchasing a variety of HIT assets, most recently acquiring Emendo, a New Zealand-based software company.
Other notable deals include:
• Apollo Global Management agreed to acquire McGraw-Hill Education for $2.5Bn;
• RedPrairie Corporation agreed to acquire JDA Software (NASDAQ:JDAS) for $1.9Bn;
• Knight Capital Group (NYSE:KCG) received a takeover offer from Getco;
• Equifax (NYSE:EFX) agreed to acquire CSC Credit Services for $1Bn;
• Hearst agreed to acquire Milliman Care Guidelines;
• Nets Holding acquired Luottokunta for $209M; and
• MSCI (NYSE:MSCI) agreed to acquire IPD Group for $125M.
There are plenty of other examples in the pages that follow.
This has been a strong year for us – our strongest ever – and we thank our clients and friends for their support. We added staff; opened an office in San Francisco and advised on some significant transactions. Marlin & Associates is one of the most active investment banking and strategic advisory firms providing strategic and financial advice to worldwide buyers and sellers of middle-market technology firms. The firm is headquartered in New York, NY and has additional offices in San Francisco, CA; Washington, DC; Toronto, Canada; and Hong Kong, China serving companies that provide information and technology to a wide range of communities including those that serve the banking, capital markets, insurance, marketing and healthcare arenas. We are humbled to have so many companies put their faith and confidence in us; pleased to see so many of our transactions completed; and always honored when our hard work is recognized by our peers.
We wish you happy, healthy holidays, and for the New Year: Renewed Strength, Fun Times, and a Bit of Adventure.